They continue to exist and we also continue to recognize them. But where Sousa-Cardozo spreads to encompass different elements, the linguistic identity of the elements is questioned, or this linguistically identified connection is linked with its alternative.

I see a window, I see a copying on a wall, and at the same time I see a shade of blue that links the two...to which I say it's a blue shade, without making any more distinction between the window and copying. I regard all of these alternating possibilities as equally valid. It's important to me, in a painting, that two incompatible systems mutually engage. I believe this painting's physicality is the starting point at "understanding" it, and by moving into its spatial volumes there's a guarantee that everything is rooted in negotiable reality. It's then transformed in my mind, which results in the image value. I can only first "develop" the image by leaving this physicality.

The painting has quietened down; the strokes are almost vertical and executed side by side, all in the same width. My mind rests.

If you're in Paris, go visit one hundred and fifty works by Amadeo, one of the greatest Modernist Portuguese Painters, at theGrand Palais.

NB: Picture taken by me at Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian in December 2015 in Lisbon.

"The thin curve [when Ye was watching a waveform
on a screen supposedly from an alien civilization], rising and falling, seemed
to possess a soul."

Metaphor only takes me so far...When I’m
reading a supposedly hard SF book I must put into action my non-suspension-of-disbelief-hat.
That’s the only way I can read this kind of SF. I’ve heard from some friends of
mine, that some books are all metaphor when the physics part of them are utter
crap…. Excuse me? It's like saying, "look here, this is my universe, but
try not to concentrate too much on it, look at all the beautiful metaphors I
wrote instead." Don’t tell me this is me being pedantic. One thing is
getting the physics right from scratch, the other thing is to do the
extrapolation stuff the “right” way. In this case, base physics is quite off
base, i.e., dead wrong in several key areas
of the book. They’re so wrong that I only finished it because I wanted to
pin-point the rest of the so-called errors. I know, I’m mean…The above-mentioned example is one of the most
glaring examples. A wave form where one’s able to see something behind it just
by looking at it! Even with poetical license in play, this is quite a bit of a
stretch. I could mention another examples, but this one is one of the most
obvious examples in showing that Cixin’s storytelling leaves a lot to be
desired.

Show-not-tell is quite absent throughout the book as any good SF vintage
book would. Unfortunately, this book was originally published in 2008. So we’re
neither in the 30, 40 nor the 50s…It’s my firm believe that because this work
was translated from “China's best SF author” by one of the well-read and
writers of SF nowadays (Ken Liu) there may be a propensity to interpret poor
form as some sort of interesting (aka exotic) nuance. If this book had been
self-published on Amazon it wouldn't be getting any attention at all. Instead
it’d be getting a lot of stick!

I'm usually not willing to roll with a
lot of nonsense when it comes to a Hard SF book, and in this case, because
getting the science right is at the core of it, I cannot read past the crappy
science.

When I was actively reading SF as if
there was no tomorrow, I’d be quite surprised to have been told that a book
like this would’ve won an Hugo Award, but in this day and age this book did
really win the 2015 Hugo Award! “Ancillary
Justice” by Ann Leckie is another good example of crappy SF
having won a Hugo Award the previous year, 2014. What’s happening to SF Fandom?
Is everyone going bonkers??? A book with this kind of info-dumping to explain the
key points of the plot and it wins a Hugo Award? It reads like tenth-rate
Stephenson. On top of that, the characters were so incredibly flat that by the
end of it I couldn’t remember any of them. Everything is so damn flat that at
times I kept saying to myself: “My God,
why do I keep on reading this kind of crap?” Alas, one is always on the
look-out to be proven wrong. It didn’t happen once again unfortunately. I’m
quite sure we won’t see the likes of Le Guin's “The Dispossessed”, Susanna
Clarke's “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell”, Frederik Pohl's “Gateway”, to
name just a few, in the next few years on the Hugo ballot.

2 stars only for allowing me to
understand certain popular school of thoughts in China. Null stars for the rest
of the book. Average: 2 stars.

NB: The Hugos’ output in this day and
age 100% suck. The books are so fucking simple-minded. Worse than that, they're
all simple-minded in the same way, so I’m unable to distinguish those meant for
grown-ups from those meant for 10-year-olds...

quarta-feira, abril 13, 2016

An orange-white umbrella of fire bent from the
pod's surface. Brown smoke curled in its wake. The craft was designed to withstand
Alpha Eradini's 10-million-degree corona, though, and it survived to glide
through the dense clouds of sulfuric acid and corrosive oxides in the upper
atmosphere of a planet those from Earth called Eden. If it were a manned craft,
the pilot would have been surprised to find the lowest layer of the planet’s
atmosphere rich with oxygen. But it was only a programmed machine from a
spacecraft that had recently visited this particular star system. Pressures as
strong as Deep Ocean scrubbed speed. The pod nosed downward as it drew close to
the surface. Its velocity was thirty kilometers per hour at impact. The ground
shook. Rocks and dust flew. The pod crumpled and rolled, flipping end over end
like an errant rock tossed down a hill, eventually coming to rest between a
pair of basaltic boulders. The door opened and the chime rang. A delivery
runner’s engine sputtered as it laboured past. The man who entered Kondati’s
shop wore the orange robe and obsidian jewelry of the Quartani Council. His
skin was leathery brown and smelled of banafi
oil. His primaries were yellow orbs of iridescence that blinked in the shop’s
dimness, and his central was a crystal blue orb high on his forehead that
marked him as from the southern regions. He said the world was about to end.

terça-feira, abril 12, 2016

Published 2013 (audio version, the one I’ve used; print
edition published 2012).

Imagine yourself at the Globe to
see a Shakespeare play, preferably Hamlet (my favourite…). Keep on imagining
standing among the crowd, quite near the stage, on a rainy evening. You look around and see people from all walks
of life, from different countries and cultures, all mesmerized by the Bard's
words...almost 400 hundred years later. Imagine laughing so heartily with the rest of
the audience, practically falling off your wooden chair. The actors are
absolutely amazed and unbelieving at the rapturous applause they receive. You cheer them to the rafters. You start to have an inkling of how audiences of
Shakespeare's own time must have received his plays. My reading of Shakespeare makes
me “re-live” stuff like these. I feel his writing will allow me to deepen my own
self-knowledge as well.

Just like water heated to 50º
degrees does not increase the caloric intake, human thought peaks, in certain
Men, to the highest intensity. Shakespeare, Rilke, Hölderlin, Celan, Kafka, Bach, Heine
represent the 50º degrees of genius. In each century two or three undertake the
ascension. From down below, we attempt the daunting task of following them.
These Men climb the mountain with great difficulty, they penetrate the clouds,
they vanish, and they reappear. They’re spied upon by us mere mortals.

What they do is was so very, very
good at doing what they did, and they did so much of it so well that it really
is quite unbelievable. Their work is so
good that many people do not believe that they were not touched by the Gods
themselves. This is particularly true with Shakespeare. Some do not believe he
alone wrote all the plays that are attributed to him, but the fact is that
he almost certainly did do so, as hard as it can be to believe when you study
Shakespeare. Potter’s intertextual
reading of his works shows that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Some creative people
have been so far beyond their own time that they haven't always been
completely understood during the years that they lived. Bach, for instance, was a person like
this. His work just sounds finished in a
way that other works are not. It's difficult to describe, but even people who
don't know much about music recognize that there is something special about
what Bach did. You can feel it in your
bones. Shakespeare works the same way.
The fact that the language has changed a good deal since Shakespeare's time
makes it more difficult for me to see that at first, but with
some pointers, I can clear away the confusion caused by that to
recognize that his work is finished and special in that same way. Shakespeare holds up a literary
mirror to the face of humanity and has forced us all to stare into its reality. That's what special about Shakespeare. For
those of us who like
to dabble in writing stuff, Shakespeare shows what genius
can do with words and characters and situations. His works are just overflowing with
fantastic little titbits laying around to enjoy, but
it does
require that I know what it is that I’m looking at, and for that, sometimes
I need the guidance of someone who already knows how
to do it. And that’s where Potter’s glimpse into the mind of Shakespeare comes
in. What a wonderful “read” it was. How fortunate I am, and how grateful, that I was able to find this book. Potter was able to open up some of the most
profound thoughts and meditations on Being that have ever seen/heard recorded
regarding Shakespeare. Once again, that most comforting and energising
feeling that "I am not alone" when I read (or listen to) Shakespeare. Potter
draws upon prior texts, genres and discourses on Shakespeare, Marlowe, Johnson that
I didn’t even knew existed! In this regard, Potter’s book needs several
re-readings. There are textual, intertextual, and sub-textual references
aplenty that will take me more than one reading to fully understand. This meant go rabbit-holing which I did...The outputs of these wonderful adventures tapped into my understanding of Shakespeare. Go figure...

I’ve read quite a big amount of
books on Shakespeare. Being able to write a biography of a figure at once so
well-known and so little documented must have been a challenge. His chapter “The Strong’st and Surest Way to Get: Histories” was quite a revelation
[I’m (re-)reading the Histories at the moment) as well as Potter’s insights
into the relation between Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton and Jonson. And when I thought I knew everything was there to know about
Shakespeare, Potter comes along and rehashes old stuff into strikingly new ways.
Oh my.

It was a pleasure to travel
alongside Potter on this wonderful adventure!

terça-feira, abril 05, 2016

Many eons ago, I was delighted
with a book selling girl behind one of the counters in a book pavilion at the
Lisbon Book Fair. Because of that I wrote a poem that I gave to her. Distant
times those were. To tell you the truth, the girl did not deserve that poem, and the poem itself was not that great, well, the usual. In any case, the thing
went down like this: in order to have a natter with her, I bought from her this
same Bocage
edition that I now got from a friend. Who would have thought that many years later
I’d hold this same book in my hands? As soon as I picked it up, memories came
flooding back. I still remember almost being taken from a thief as I perused
books at her bookstand, touching them without really looking at them while at
the same I kept looking at her eyes that could be seen from any place in the
fair, as a “model like you’re…but oh sadness!”.

I can now hear some of my learned friends
saying, after having read the above paragraph, “you expose yourself too much!”
What they really wanted to say is, “I admire your courage.” Since I started
publishing stuff on my blog, those are the kind of comments I hear more often.
Who cares about what I write? No one. I’ve always believed that one shouldn’t
remove the personal from the texts. That’s why I said, somewhere else, that
what I write is (almost) always embedded in my own personal history. That’s
what makes what I write intelligible to me.

And just because I can, below an
attempt at translating the untranslatable into German of one of my favourite
poems by Bocage:

“Camões, großer Camões, wie ähnlich

Ist mein Geschick dem deinen,
wenn man sie vergleicht!

Der gleiche Grund ließ uns vom Tejo
weggehn

Und frevelhaft dem Meer-Giganten
trotzen.

Wie du am Ganges-Strome dich
befandest,

Befind ich mich im Elend einer
grauenhaften Not.

Ich sehne mich wie du umsonst
nach eitlen Freuden

Und weine so wie du, sehnsüchtig
Liebender.

Gleich dir vom harten Schicksal
hintergangen,

Erflehe ich vom Himmel meinen
Tod, in der Gewissheit,

Dass nur im Grab ich Frieden
finden kann.

Mein Vorbild bist du, doch oh
Jammer

Mag ich dir auch an bösem
Schicksal gleichen,

Ich gleich dir nicht an Gaben der
Natur.”

This is one of the reasons why I think
German is not only the most beautiful language I learned, but it’s also the
love of my life. Much more than Portuguese and English. The German language
makes me organize things in my head in a way very different when compared with
the Latin and English languages. There’s an enormous cognitive benefit by
installing this “tool” in our brains. When installed, the doors of
consciousness that open up are tremendous. I’m not only talking about the
possibility of reading Rilke, Celan, Hölderlin, Goethe, Kafka in the original.
The point is that what these writers put on paper are thoughts inseparable from
the language itself in which they were written. No one, I repeat no one, having
read Rilke in Portuguese or English has any idea what this represents in terms
of the insurmountable geniality of Kafka, Celan and of course Rilke (my favourite trio of
German writers). Some translations are simply ludicrous. Lately I've been on a winning streak...

Do we want to live without the
real dimension of what these Men left to the world? It’s never too late. Trust
me. Learn German. And now, my beloved readers are thinking, "But he just read a book of Poetry of one the most distinguished Portuguese Poets, but he's still haranguing us on the fact that we all should learn German! How can that be??" Well my friends, you should have been paying close attention to what I've been writing for almost 10 years on this very same blog, i.e., for those of you who are still with me after all are these years...

segunda-feira, abril 04, 2016

Jagged pieces of light stream
throughout the computer store front window, creeping under the doorways. They
had to dodge the impact. Of light that sparks up when there’s too much
avoidance. It caroms off the shelves, past the sidewalk, and landing right
on a purple tiled floor. It disappears at last. Darkly with a mind that is now
made up. It oozes into the color like the purple of poppy ripping. Congruous. Pieced together until it fits perfectly.

This book has
been my favourite book for twenty years or more. When I was attending the
Goethe Institute I had access to its library which is huge. I could request
any book I wanted, and the services of the Goethe library would provide me with
it. It was literally manna from heaven...Consequently, I never had a copy for
myself. Until now. This gorgeous edition translated from German into Portuguese
(bilingual edition), produced something worth having. It's a fine addition to
my German library at home. On top of that the translation is far from
serviceable. Apart from this translation, I only had come into contact with the
translation done my Vasco
Graça Moura which is a different beast altogether.

I think the
first time I wrote about Rilke was in 2008. What more can I say that I haven’t said
before? Apparently still lots remained to be said and written…

Rilke’s poems
are considered quite difficult to translate from the German, and frankly, I
even have trouble understanding them in English and Portuguese. His letters, on
the other hand, are quite comprehensible and even inspirational. That's why,
when given the chance, I always recommend this book to some of my literate
friends. Some of them "get it", some don't. That's Rilke for you. But
what shines out of everything he writes, be it in German, English or in
Portuguese, rendered by anyone, is the astonishing purity and largeness of his
poet’s heart, even when he's writing prose, as it's the case here. That's one
of the reasons why I love bilingual editions of something that lives
particularly close to my heart. I get to follow the text line by line as I think
about the choices done by the translator. Besides enjoying the original, I'm
able to think about the translation as well, namely about the solutions found
by the translator.

What does Rilke
have that other poets do not possess? Talent is not enough, and vocabulary is
not enough. What about rhyming words and phrases…? What Rilke achieved and what
he advises us to seek is a state of Nirvana where certain characteristics
synchronize to produce a poem that is at once lyrical and philosophical,
understated yet powerful, terse yet tactful, and most importantly, honest and
heartfelt.

I've always read
the letters as if they were already detached from the persons they were sent
to, and now they can be also addressed to each one of us...

One of the most
valuable lessons I took away from reading these letters more than 20 years ago,
was trying to create a private space to be creative. It goes without saying
that in this day and age (it was true 20 years, and it’s still true), I’ve had
people trying to pry me out with “accusations” of being anti-social (“bicho do
mato” as we say in Portuguese; I’m not sure about the translation, but it means
something like “someone who has never seen daylight”). In creative growth I
consistently run into the idea that you do that in your twenties and then you
simply produce. Not so. I want to produce, and also be creative in other areas,
be it in software developing, in poetry, or in prose. I still want to be
creative in my old age, if I get to live that far, no matter the area I’m
involved in…

NB: Justo's
afterword is also something worth reading. I've read a lot of Rilke, but I'd
never thought about his work in those terms. Enlightening... 5 stars for the
original, and 5 stars for the translation and afterword.

sábado, abril 02, 2016

“An essential aspect of the mind and art of
Shakespeare, then, is his lack of self-consciousness. Nothing but a complete
lack of interest in self-promotion, from which the careful publication of Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece are the only
aberration, can explain Shakespeare’s invisibility. The lives of lesser men and
women, insignificant members of his own family, the actors he worked with, the
politicians and courtiers he knew or might have known, have all been
scrutinized minutely, their every action tracked to the find the spoor of the
bard, but they have yielded all but that.”

Why did the
editors of the VSI series wanted to replace this little gem of a book with the
one, by the exact same title, by Stanley Wells? I’ve always wondered. I can’t
even find Greer’s book in the homepage
of the VSI Series!

Maybe because in
Greer’s book you also won’t find an attempt at finding the whereabouts of
Shakespeare. Greer only wants to commit to a description of Shakespeare’s
thought, i.e, only what we can read in his works.

Comparing both
books, Greer’s book is a much more scholarly study of Shakespeare’s work,
analysing in detail of some of the plays in thematic chapters: “Poetics,”
“Ethics,” “Politics,” “Teleology” and “Sociology.” As can already be garnered
from these chapter titles, the book is written in a very academic level. Maybe
it was too much for the VSI series editors, but I still don’t understand why
they published it in the first place. On top of that, Wells’ book completely
replaces Greer’s (including the number) in the VSI series. I think it’s all rather
lamentable.

Greer’s book is
erudite, scholarly and engrossing at the same time and thereby an excellent example
of how to make a reading of Shakespeare in the study approachable and
interesting to a wider audience. For the Shakespeare uninitiated we’d say in
Portuguese, “este livro é muita areia
para a a camioneta” (literal translation: “this book is too much sand for the
little truck”, but what it really means is “the book is something that is just
too big to be handled by the uninitiated”)…But if the uninitiated wants to use
it as the beginning of the quest, I think she or he would be in for a real
treat, because Greer is able to pick out single threads of his mimetic
arguments along the way that I’d be able to do just by watching the plays. In
this day and age, where everything is all about multimedia, one might be
compelled to go 180º and start thinking that watching the plays is going to
expose some hidden nuggets of Shakespearean lore. Nope. I never thought
attending theatre performances of the plays is the answer to understanding
Shakespeare. Why? Because they’re highly allegorical, interpretative, and
sometimes exegetical, full of “misleading” stage stuff, making language
irrelevant, difficult to hear and to follow. The way to go is to use a mixed
approach, as I’ve
outlined previously. Maybe this is your perfect companion to the House of
Cards TV Series. Maybe it’s not. People who haven't read Shakespeare with care
tend to make easy sloppy comparisons between his work and stuff that is
unspeakably inferior to it. Some people know something about Shakespeare, and
some don't. Let me say to the latter. I have watched the entire first series of
“House of Cards”. I enjoyed it so well, I’ll watch the second, third, and so
forth, seasons, too, but I chafe at the idea of comparing it to Shakespeare. I
recently watched the video version of Coriolanus. The similarities of this history to Julius Caesar
and Macbeth are quite numerous and show the progression and growth of
Shakespeare's craft quite clearly. “House of Cards” on the other hand, as good
as it is, simply does not provide its creative staff the same opportunities for
growth. Shakespeare's language is neither stilted nor archaic, but strikes our
ears oddly because everything is stated in couplets with a very uniform meter
of the iambic kind. There are no such
poetical feats in any of the “House of Cards” performances unfortunately.
Theatrical elements such as the size of the cast, the complexity of the
interplay between them, the advance of the narrative and the use of crowds and
bit players in Shakespeare far, far exceeds nearly anything contemporary
dramatists on stage, big or little screen attempt, let alone accomplish.
Finally, Shakespeare is able to effect vast mood swings and convey great
emotional power simply through the script without music or action to reinforce
it. What makes Shakespeare great isn't his plots, many of which are not his
invention. What makes him great is his taking these old tales and setting them
to clever rhyme and meter, and blending fart and pee jokes with highbrow
references to mythology. I am kind of surprised that people think that
Shakespeare's characters are one dimensional...really Macbeth or Lady Macbeth?
They are "stock' characters? Honestly, I just don't know what to say to
that. Each of them has an inner life, and while representing archetypes, they
are also each psychologically complex particular individuals. Underwood and his
wife are fun enough to watch, but they aren't real or deep; they don't resonant
that way at all. I still think that it’s irrelevant whether “House of Cards” is
aiming at a Shakespearian standard. It’s all beside the point to me. Underwood's asides to the audience evoke
Richard III's, which communicates pretty bluntly what the character is all
about. The lamentation that most of the
characters are monsters is delivered by the characters themselves. For me the
political machinations are by far the most interesting part of the show. Frank's smiley way of setting people up for
a spectacular fall is fun to watch. In
Shakespeare, Richard is 100% monster. In
historical reality, the picture was much more complex, apparently because the
real Richard, just like Frank, had the
uncanny ability to motivate people to kill off his enemies, and in so doing to
destroy themselves.

To argue whether "House of Cards" can be compared to Shakespeare is redundant. Of course it can - it is clearly based on
specific Shakespearean characters (Richard III, Lady Macbeth, Iago). The argument is whether it is a worthy
adaptation and how it fits with other contemporary adaptations/appropriations
of Shakespeare (of which there are many).

NB: The British
version was literally stunning, moving so fast and furiously, like a
roller-coaster, where certain moments became indelible in ways that those who
have only seen the Netflix series can only imagine. Ian Richardson and the
lovely and astonishing Susannah Harker completely stole the show….